Even though [Ga Machine That Loves Gas] had only one visible skill — and even that skill had incomplete data — the potential alone was worth the steep Block cost.
Stats were easy to co by. But top-tier relics and unique gear? Those were priceless.
More importantly, the price right now was actually low.
The two fragnts Rita bought had been listed at 480gBlock and 490gBlock, likely underpriced due to the new Stamina system. Players were eager to convert items into currency, so prices had dipped a little. Nine-piece item fragnts were valuable but notoriously hard to sell.
But that price drop was only temporary.
Very few players knew that incomplete item fragnts could be freely pieced together into functional relics. And even fewer were willing to spend a massive number of Blocks on sothing they weren't sure they'd ever complete.
In fact, 99% of item fragnts were eventually bought back by their original owners.
This was still the early stage of the ga. Once players started racking up more in-ga ti and accumulating surplus Blocks — after setting aside money for ga entries and food — their desire to collect would naturally follow.
And once that kicked in, these things would skyrocket in price.
Rita couldn't sit still. Once B8017913 finished examining the ga machine, she took it back, removed a Block from her waist, and attached the console to her body — then reinserted the Block to hold it in place.
"Let's go play. You two are covering the tickets."
Nivalis wanted to help Rita complete this new artifact — after all, if she had asked to play, Rita definitely would've let her.
It was already 3:20 PM, and they hadn't done much. Another few minutes and it'd be ti to pay the next round of amusent fees.
Rita led her two companions toward a ga she'd already scouted earlier — bumper cars.
Each Divine Ga attraction had its own complex rules, but they were all based loosely on their real-world equivalents:
Star pirate ship? A loot battle.
Claw machine? Literally grabbing things.
So naturally, she leaned toward rides she'd already played back in the BS system.
From the mont she saw bumper cars, she'd been planning to try it.
Nivalis could drive. And this ga charged entry per car, not per player — so all three of them could ride together.
There were about 100 bumper cars in the arena, each seating one to three players.
The arena was large, but not massive. Big enough for everyone to drive creatively, even pull off a drift or two — but small enough that avoiding collisions was impossible. Dodge one car, crash into another. There just wasn't room to avoid everything, no matter how skilled you were.
Cars varied in size — scaled automatically to fit the largest passenger inside.
Speed varied slightly too. It might be tied to the car's size, or to kills — Rita noticed one car speed up a bit after KO'ing a player.
Other than that, no obvious patterns stood out. The cars chased and smashed into one another. Players flung skills back and forth.
Occasionally, a car would just… stall, like it glitched.
Overall? It looked like a ga of driver skill and controlled chaos.
Nivalis began adjusting the shape and length of her claws and feet.
B8017913 was busy modifying its dagger — using so stick-shaped Blocks borrowed from Nivalis to turn it into a spear, more suitable for stabbing from inside the car.
Bumper car gas ran 30 minutes per round, but each could fit at least 200 players. By the ti Rita queued up, the current ga was almost done. At exactly 3:40 PM, it was their turn.
Nivalis paid for the car, but they all wordlessly handed the ticket money to B8017913 to process.
The little gingerbread ticket vendor took their Blocks, yawned lazily, then raised its right hand in a loose fist — only the pinky stuck out, pointing toward a lone white bumper car at the 7 o'clock position.
Rita and Nivalis both turned toward B8017913.
B8017913 also paused, then confird:
"It's a good one."
They didn't know why yet — but they trusted the sign.
So they picked the car that the little gingerbread man had silently blessed.
Nivalis took the driver's seat. Rita sat shotgun. B8017913 squatted in the dip between the two seats, on the backrest ridge.
Nivalis: "You think your kind would scam us?"
B8017913: "Unlikely. V-series likes to deceive. L-series doesn't. That one's an L."
Rita was inspecting the bumper car. At first glance, nothing stood out — it even looked kind of… old.
Nivalis agreed. She asked the group chat:
"Is there anything special about this car?"
Rita: "Yeah, I was wondering the sa."
Truth be told, even B8017913 was wondering.
B8017913: "What's special about this car?"
L3217: "Does being super old count?"
B8017913 glitched for a mont. It didn't understand. It had no beef with L3217. In fact, most chanicals didn't really hold grudges at all.
"Why?"
L3217: "Your contractor, BS-Rita, broke the heart of my junior."
B8017913: "???"
L3217: "Ask her if she rembers L12767777."
B8017913 turned to look at Rita, who had been waiting patiently for an answer, and asked in the chat:
"Do you rember L12767777?"
The number sounded familiar. Was it this one?
Rita frowned, then imdiately pouted in an aggrieved tone:
"Of course I rember! How could I forget?!"
The two of them stared at each other in silence for several long seconds.
B8017913: …Well, so much for arguing with L3217.
Nivalis: "What's going on? Did that chanical have history with her?"
Nivalis had missed a lot during the Gem Miner ga, when she'd been asleep recovering dragon blood from Hatred Thorns.
B8017913: "L3217 says BS-Rita broke their junior's heart."
Nivalis: "…Why am I not even slightly surprised?"
Rita: "What?! When did this happen?! I don't even rember doing anything!"
She did rember hugging that little robot, flying around with it. How was that… heartbreak?
…
L3217: "So? Does she rember?"
B8017913: "She rembers! How could she not?!"
L3217: "Actually, their number was L4327777."
B8017913: "......"
Awkward.
No wonder it couldn't find any record earlier.
It had assud this was soone Rita t before contracting with it.
And now it just wanted to uninstall its emotion module.
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